At a loss...

[MAXUM]

Originally Posted by Cal Coon

I have a 93 23' bow rider with a 350 mercruiser magnum (carburetor), that I shorted out trying to fix the rpm gauge. The rpm gauge was not working, so I removed the whole cluster to find a loose wire hanging from the tach that was labeled "ground", so I just "assumed" it came loose somehow, but I could not see where it would have come from since it had a female connector on it, but I could not see a male connector anywhere within it's reach, so, with the boat idling, I touched the dangling wire to one of the screws holding the gauge in place to see if the gauge would work... The boat just died. I have no power to the engine, or gauges whatsoever. No click, no nothing, but all the accessories still work, blower, power engine hatch, trim tabs, lights, etc, etc... I reset every breaker on the panel, but still have no power to the gauges/engine. Obviously, I tripped a breaker, or blew a fuse somewhere, but I can't find it for the life of me! There is no "in line" fuse under the dash anywhere that I can see, and I found 2 in line fuses on the engine, but both were good, and the 50amp breaker on the engine didn't need to be reset... Now I am at a loss as to where to look. Any suggestions before I have to bring it somewhere...

There may be a fuseable link in the ignition circuit. A fusable link is not a "fuse" but rather a short section of wire that is designed to melt should to much current flow through it to protect against a potential fire.

Really as suggested bust out a multimeter that will be the only way to see if you have power going to and out of your ignition switch. If you have a fuse block I'd start there and make sure you have power where you should then go from there to the ignition switch and so on. Having a schematic in this case would be really helpful to map out how things are wired.

One thing to remember with a boat there really is no chassis "ground" it's typically operating off a floating ground, possibly in line off the engine block or off the battery itself.